Reclamation
by Valieara
Summary: Azkadellia fic. Dark hair had mingled with dark hair, curls to straight locks, indistinguishable but for that difference. How she had adored her baby sister.


**Disclaimer:** I own nothing.

**Setting/Spoilers:** For all three installments, set sometime (not long) after the third.

**Notes:** Written mainly because I adore the Az/DG sister angle of the whole series, and because this, of all the things I had (have!) to do, this is the only thing I could finish. Just a little scene, because I can't imagine Azkadellia was even remotely close to alright after the closing credits.

* * *

_Concentrate!_

"Just concentrate," her own voice whispered at her, half-forgotten, anachronistic.

_Two little princesses_…but she was lost, and it was no use. Her face, half-familiar, stared at her with eyes that were for once her own. A thousand souls drifted through the expanse of time and space, silvery and incomprehensible, and were lost within her.

_No one ever knows._

She awoke to find her sister curled around her shaking body, her hand holding tightly to hers.

"…dancing in a row," DG's voice came softly, words warm and muffled against her back, and nothing had ever felt as real. "Where the light will take them…"

"No one ever knows…" she whispered in kind, and DG's hands, small, hesitant, were stroking back the length of her hair, twisting it into a braid, a ponytail, a bun. The dissonance was wrong in this setting; complimentary to the natural darkness that shrouded them. The contradiction suited the moment, and was not right.

"Was it a bad one?" DG asked quietly behind her, and Azkadellia sighed.

"No," she replied, for it hadn't been; at least in comparison to what it might have been. She wondered how it was that her sister was so easily able to slip back into the role of the younger sister she always had been, small and warm and innocent against her back until she could muster the hope that it might somehow bleed into her by virtue of her closeness. Tea, and hot chocolate, and small hands after silly nightmares; the reassuring pudginess of her sister's youth between her own more slender fingers; and for a moment, no time had passed, and she was twelve, curled up in bed with her seven year old sister. The bright colors of the day, of the forest, of their dresses, passed before her eyes; and if it had been so, she might have been able to sleep, not knowing what images, what suppressed memories that by proxy were her own might pass before her eyes as well. Dark hair mingled with dark hair, curls to straight locks, indistinguishable but for that difference.

How she had adored her baby sister.

_Az, I'm scared,_ had whimpered her sister not so long ago. Darkness; a light created itself from it, and she smiled to see it, setting the lantern on DG's bedside table.

_Then I'll chase away all the bad dreams,_ had been her reply, so very long ago, as she crawled into bed with her sister. _Take my hand and nothing will hurt you._

Oh, simplicity; how she longed for it now. Her hand reached for the new contours of her face, the unknown swell of her breasts. _I'm sorry I let go, _had said her little sister, and no time had passed; and for that moment, she had believed. But hope lived in youth, and youth had fled with the light in her eyes.

"Az," said her grown up baby sister behind her, and she thought she might yet swell from this numbness. Hands raining softly down her back, face burrowing into her shoulder; though the older sister in her didn't know how to be, anymore, and remained still.

_Spinning fast and freely on their little toes_

"I'm not going anywhere," DG said, and the words were warming. _Your adventures have a way of getting me into trouble, that's what you said, you said Your adventures have a way of getting me into trouble. _The weight of her guilt, the break in her voice, the collapse at her feet. Little girls; _don't let go._ A worried mother, a loving mother. The tambre of her voice; a distant mother. She shivered. DG cried her guilt out behind her.

Bright, fleeting images she tried not to see. A thousand arguments in her own head. Her own words forced, finally, through her own mouth. A man had spit on her earlier today, and she had let him. She was glad no one had seen.

Blame and censure; neither of them were free. She wanted to turn and hold her sister as tightly as she was holding her, to assure her that it was alright now. The world spun, or her mind; and it never was. She turned instead to lie on her back, her dark hair fanning beneath her, and still DG clung to her. She allowed an arm to come around her, and stared at the ceiling because sleep was not an option.

Her sister's eyes had always been wide and uncanny, and it was easy to feel them on her. "Take my hand, Az," she instructed softly.

After a moment, she did, open gaze never wavering from the nondescript point above her.

_Concentrate_

"Just concentrate," DG whispered, and their joined hands glowed and tingled in the old familiar way. In front of her eyes, a doll spun, bright green dress against a bright blue sky, its beauty not subdued by the dull overtones of the space above her. She closed her eyes.

She slept, and did not dream.


End file.
